Philosophical Insights from New Religious Movements & Alternative Spiritualities

Dear Colleagues:

We are pleased to announce an open call-for-abstracts for our conference on Philosophical Insights from New Religious Movements & Alternative Spiritualities, to be held at the Concordia University of Edmonton campus July 24-25 of 2026.

We welcome brief abstracts (300 words or less) for papers that fit within the conference theme. Abstracts must be received by May 1, and should be sent as PDF documents to: [email protected]  and to [email protected]

Accepted abstracts will be notified by May 10. Each presenter will receive a $400 CDN honorarium for their participation. Additionally, after the conference presenters will have the opportunity to submit a polished version of their full paper for inclusion in a peer-reviewed anthology volume arising out of the conference. We especially welcome abstracts from graduate students and early career scholars.

This will be primarily an in-person event, though a small number of virtual presentations may be included in the program for the benefit of those unable to travel to Edmonton. 

The rationale behind the conference: within analytic philosophy of religion there is a commonly expressed concern that the boundaries of the discipline are too narrow. The large majority of work produced remains focused on Christian theism and its principal rival in the modern west, namely, metaphysical naturalism. And though important work has been done to bring other traditions into the dialogue over the past twenty years, nearly all of that literature has dealt with other major world religions (especially Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam). By contrast, little has been done to explore potential insights arising specifically out of new religious movements [NRMs] and alternative spiritualities [ASPs]. This is unfortunate, in part because NRMs and ASPs boast tens of millions of adherents worldwide; moreover they are of considerable interest amongst our students (the ‘Gen Z’ cohort) who by and large do not adhere to major world religions but are also not secular. The aim of this project is to promote and expand philosophical work on NRMs and ASPs, and to do so in a manner that will be accessible to those very students and to interested laypeople generally. (Examples of NRMs and ASPs would include: the Bahá’í faith, CaoDaism, Eckankar, Est, Falun Gong, ISCKON, Mormonism, Neopaganism, Neoshamanism, Subud, Thelema, Theosophy, Umbanda, Wicca, etc.)

Some sample questions of the sort we hope to see broached by participating scholars:

(a) What are the most common arguments offered in favour of polytheism by contemporary Neopagan thinkers, and how should those arguments be assessed?

(b) What are the axiological implications of polytheism as compared with Christian theism or naturalism?

(c) How is the notion of ‘energy’ understood and employed by key New Age thinkers? What arguments are available to support those notions?

(d) How is the epistemology of revelation understood within the Bahá’í faith, and what are the best arguments in favour of that distinctive understanding?

(e) Does the prima facie materialist ontology of Mormonism undermine standard formulations of metaphysical naturalism?

(f) CaoDaism is often classed as an eclectic or syncretic tradition; what exactly does that mean in a religious context? Is this a fair characterization? And if so, what (if any) are the epistemological

implications of syncretism within religion? What (if any) are the axiological implications? (I.e., is

syncretism in religion something prima facie admirable or questionable?)

(g) How should we understand the esoteric/exoteric divide within religions? How is that distinction understood and implemented within Wicca? What is the meaning and value of ‘hiddenness’ within religious practice?

(h) What are the boundaries (if any) between spiritual experiences and the paranormal? What insights on this divide emerge from NRMs classed as ‘UFO faiths’, such as Vale do Amanhecer? 

(i) Can careful engagement with NRMs and ASPs shed new light on longstanding debates concerning the conceptual boundaries of ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’? E.g., does Falun Gong properly count as a religion? Does the New Age movement properly count as a religious movement? Examining these and other case studies may prove illuminating for larger issues of conceptual taxonomy.

(j) Ceremonial magic constitutes an important part of Wicca and many Neopagan groups. What are the competing ontologies of magic operative at present within these groups, and what are the principal arguments they use to support them? What are the divergent axiological implications of distinct conceptions of magic? What are the conceptual dividing lines between ceremonial magic and other forms of religious ritual (e.g., sacrifice, sacrament, liturgy)?

(k) What work still needs to be done on the very concept of ‘newness’ in this context? For instance, some prominent groups commonly classified as NRMs would not self-identify in this way, viewing themselves instead as reviving ancient traditions (e.g., reconstructionist Neopagan groups), or as reforming older movements (e.g., Ahmadiyya or Mormonism), or as the novel manifestation or exemplification of what is actually a perennial tradition (e.g., the Bahá’í faith or Oomoto-kyo). What then are the conceptual boundaries of NRMs? Does Mormonism still properly count as an NRM even though it is roughly 200 years old?

(l) Problematizing the notion of ‘newness’ in this context may also help to clarify the reasons why the younger generation (‘Gen Z’) shows so much interest in NRMs and APSs — e.g., perhaps there is a simultaneous yearning for deep tradition and for something accessible to modern life and contemporary concerns. Relatedly, interest in NRMs and ASPs may be interlinked with the much-discussed growth of interest in alternative social/political forms among members of Gen Z. 

Questions about the event can be sent to the co-organizers, Dr. Travis Dumsday and Dr. Navid Pourmokhtari:

[email protected]

[email protected]

This conference is being organized with the generous financial assistance of the Global Philosophy of Religion Project 2 (in turn supported by the John Templeton Foundation and the Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham), Athabasca University, and Concordia University of Edmonton (with supplementary funding from CUE’s Research Cluster in Christian Philosophy & Theology).